The Peace Grant

No singing of any
kind. All year the rooms dark.
Then a week of lights.
The owners have returned,
their daughters haunt
the balconies.
One of them looks at me
and doesn’t look away.
A thousand years pass.
Whatever happened in that moment,
what might have been.
Between the ones in charge,
those who write the past
and the rest of us consigned
unknown and earthed.